How a double monastery can love the unlovable
Proposed rules for a marriage between groups of people rather than individuals, and etched in stone
In the last post, I talked about loving the unlovable, and in this post I propose the architecture of sanctuary to fix it: double monasteries.
The problem to solve is a little ambitious: teach robots (actually men) how to love. Conveniently, there’s a great newsletter about this from another writer, and she’s worth subscribing to:
…but she can only do so much. Sometimes, in order to help lovers put down their emotional walls, we need to put up some physical ones. We know this is true, and we feel it’s true, but how do we do it, and what does it look like?
Absolute surveillance and absolute privacy
Men need to live in monasteries, and everything they do should be tracked — it’s that simple. Lack of privacy interferes with their moral growth. Women, on the other hand, benefit from having a little space and privacy, and often desire it. A woman shouldn’t have to depend on a man for food and shelter. We shouldn’t incentivize her to undress any more than she wants to, nor should we prevent her from undressing as she pleases. She should own her body. The solution for her is a nunnery, except there should not be any requirement to track these women as would be the case with men.
It would be difficult for people to have sex in a monastery where everything is tracked. However, sex in a convent would be very easy given the privacy of the place. And also, what’s to prevent such a place from turning into a brothel? Suppose men who sneak in get fined. How is that any different from paying for sex? In any case, we again shouldn’t impose anything like this on the women. They should to vote to decide on what happens to the men and women who enter the convent, and under what circumstances. You still need roofers to fix the tiles of your convent, after all.
Monasteries and convents should be built in twos. Women choose by vote which of the two they’d rather live in. Men who live in the male monastery will be employees of this monastery and hirable for contract work by people in the broader economy. Half of the money will go to the convent. Any food delivered to or produced by the monastery will give first dibs to the women.
Race, gender, sexuality, and commitment
What about transgender and non-binary people? Trans people would be included. Both monasteries will vote and whichever monastery has the higher proportion of “yes” votes will get the trans person. The goal of the monastery isn’t to exclude anyone, but to give each person an environment that can allow them to thrive.
What about racial equity? Monasteries would need to reflect the demographics of their location. They would need to be more diverse than the top companies in the SP500.
What if someone gets pregnant in the monastery? Again, the monastery should not force any woman to leave, especially when she’s at her most vulnerable. If the guy who impregnated her is a monk, the male side of the monastery will decide, by vote, whether this means he needs to leave.
Monasteries vote on who gets to join, and if you’re accepted, this acceptance is nearly irrevocable, and you will get a guaranteed job upon entry. However, any individual is free to leave at any time. This is the opposite of the traditional monastery where it is the monk who makes takes the vow of celibacy and commitment.
Religion
Each monastery will have its own axioms (religion) determined by vote. This can be any religion, including Buddhism, Christianity, Satanism, Islam, Game~B, or any other. Religion gives people purpose, community, and shared values. Religious communities tend to work better than secular ones. Religion gives you a reason to live. You do not need to accept the religion to join, but since other votes will likely be driven by the axiomatic system, joining the wrong monastery could mean limitations to what you can eat, among other things. For example, an Islamic monastery would pray 5 times a day, and would likely make special accommodations for this, and so it makes little sense to join a monastery unless you agree with its principles.
Loose ends
Men will do all the work in the monastery, and women will be free to help as much or as little as they’d like. Actually, I think instead of splitting monasteries by “men” and “women”, they should be split into something like “green” and “purple” since they are essentially the oppose of red/pink and blue (which already have gender designations).
Why monastery pairs? In laying out this system, I think 2 is the minimum. If a monastery wants to create a triplet, they should bring it to a vote.
Two is also natural place to start because duopolies exist at all scales. You have positive and negative charges, logic has true and false, a brain has two hemispheres, and you likely have two hands. There is a minimum of 2 genders. 2 is the the most basic place to start.
What if one side of the monastery has more people and always gets its way? In that case, the other side has an incentive to recruit a new person. Since any monastery makes a permanent commitment to its residents, they have a strong incentive to be choosy, but in order to “win” internal elections, they need to recruit people. These two incentives play against one another.
What’s the point of all this? It’s to create a place that can drive men to step up, and a place where women are cared for by this stepping of up. The structure of the double monastery is meant to mirror that of a marriage. Although love isn’t everything, it’s pretty damn close. Why make it work with woke ideas? Although I disagree with wokeness, I don’t believe the answer is to cast anyone aside. It’s very difficult to love people you disagree with, and the structure of my proposed double monastery aims to create a system that helps people care for one another. A semi-secular monastic body that can commit itself to you is a special thing. It might be legally organized as a cooperative? A country commits itself to its citizens. A country is nothing more than a group of people, and it aims to care for every one of its citizens. Elon Musk also calls a government as a corporation in the limit.
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